Tattoo Stories

Tattoo Stories with Krewella

They live for the night, and they've made their fans from all over feel alive with their addicting music. Now, Krewella is preparing to release their debut album Get Wet on September 24th. While living the #krewlife, the trio has managed to build a large and loyal fan base, and have proven to their krew and dance music fans everywhere that they aren't going anywhere, anytime soon.

Krewella recently stopped by iHeartRadio where they showed us all of their tattoos, and it turns out, each work of art, in ink, has a cool story behind it! Check out Tattoo Stories with Krewella below:

Yasmine, Jahan, and Kris aka Rain Main are extremely close (Yasmine and Jahan are sisters), but they are bounded together as one family with ink. If you didn't already know the story of Krewella, the trio decided to quit school, and put all of their energy into a music career, and they did this on 6/8/10 (June 8th, 2010). Being such an important day to them, they each decided to celebrate it with tattoos. Yasmine and Jahan have theirs on their neck, and Kris has his on his arm.

Yasmine says of her first tattoo (6/8/10), "We all got our 6-8-10 tattoos. Me and Jahan have it on our necks, Kris has it on his arm, and it’s like our dedication to our whole livelihood, our careers, our friendship or relationship with each other. So it means a lot to all of us together. It’s like our bond basically and it’s what I want to spend the rest of my life doing with these people, so it’s very important to me."

That's not all the ink Yasmine has. On her right forearm she has a tattoo of a half dead Kurt Cobain, which was designed by a fan, and took about 4 and a half hours to do! She explains that Nirvana is her favorite band.

She says, "This one is like my dedication to Kurt Cobain cause he’s what got me obsessed with music in general. They were my first obsession band. I was obsessed with Nirvana, so this is like my tribute to him being alive forever and his music, but him also being dead in real life."

Yasmine explains that a fan from New York, named Alex, designed the tattoo for her. She says, "We’re actually friends now. I gave her the idea, take a picture of Kurt Cobain, and morph one of the sides of his face into a zombie or a skeleton, or something looking very dead, and she killed it obviously. And I got the tattoo a few months later. She goes to art school, she’s so talented. That’s why I hit her up for it."

Yasmine may live in Los Angeles now, but she never forgets where she comes from. Right below her collarbone, she has four stars, as represented on the official flag of her hometown. She explains, "I have Chicago stars right here. There’s four stars in the middle [on the Chicago flag]. So this was just my little tribute. It was the day before we moved out of Chicago I got this tattoo. It was really sappy."

She's not stopping there. She wants to start working on her sleeve, and shares her plans for more ink. "There’s this really cool drawing, it’s a human heart, but each part of the heart is made up of different musical instruments. So it looks like a human heart from far away, but when you get close up there’s like an organ, there’s a trumpet, a guitar neck, it’s really cool."

Yasmine and her sister are covered in tattoos, while Kris only as a few at the moment.

Kris only recently got his 6-8-10 tattoo in the last six months, and it was designed by a fan! He explains, "I went on Twitter and I said…'If anyone wants to design the tattoo…' So I got a couple back from people and I found one that I really liked and I asked them to change a little bit of it. He’s [the fan] actually from New York. So we came out here [New York]. I love like metal music, and it just reminds me of like, brutality. Not brutality like violence, just like death metal music, you know, where I come from."

Kris does have a few favorite metal bands, and revealed that he's been playing guitar for 12 years. "Right now, Slip Knot, Killswitch Engage, is what I really listen to. Everyone’s always like, 'Oh so what kind of dance music do you listen to?' I’m like, 'I don’t.' Just metal."

Kris' first tattoo, was designed by his babysitter (who he reveals he had a crush on when he was younger)! He got it when he was 18. He says, "My babysitter did it. She’s a tattoo artist. I had like a 13 year-old sister and she wasn’t babysitting me, I was 18. But she designed it and didn’t charge me really anything, cause she was a homie. But I never finished it up. It’s called biomechanical, it’s sort of like incorporating robotic stuff with aliens, or alien-looking things, so it’s like a skull and an alien tail, and then this is a cave. It kind of reminds me of just being 18/17 and just playing with my homies in bands. It was the best time of my life, I mean not like this [the krew life] isn’t awesome."

Kris also has a tattoo on his inner-lip, which he got in Los Angeles, and describes as a "YOLO" moment. "It was a YOLO moment, I was like, 'I’m gonna get Rain Man.' I always wanted the “brootal” on my lip cause it was just like metal and so then I was like, “Oh, I’ll just do Rain Man.” I got the backwards R. It looks horrible. Right after you do it [the tattoo], you have to blot it cause there’s ink, so I was like, 'Can I swallow this?!' You know, I kept going and getting napkins and like dabbing it. But I survived."

Kris plans on getting more tattoos. He tells us he'd like to get his sisters' names. "I wanna get my sisters’ names.

It's hard for Krewella to find time to stop at tattoo places to add more. Kris says, "If we can find a masseuse who’s a tattoo artist and bring them on the bus and then by the time, after seventy days, we’re just gonna be like, head to toe. You know, I wanna get like a calf tattoo, cause I have excellent calves from playing soccer forever. I’m weird about my calves. Sometimes I take calf selfies, I have yet to instagram it. I will though."

Jahan reveals she loves neck tattoos, which is why hers is full of ink. Aside from her 6-8-10 tattoo (which was her first and a birthday present from Yasmine), she has roses - one side is a rose with thorns and the other, a tattered rose.

She explains, "I love neck tattoos, I’ve always loved it. For some reason everytime I get a tattoo, I like putting tattoos in dangerous places, because I love the idea of not regretting anything. And in twenty years I might have a really gross wrinkly neck, but whatever, you live with your mistakes.

On the roses: "I love the idea of every rose has a thorn, everything that’s beautiful has something ugly with it, too. It also represents how I feel about success, you have to suffer in order to succeed. You have to try and fail, and try to win, and you have to sink to swim, that whole idea. I have a tattered rose where the petals of the rose kind of have holes in them. I love the idea of things that are beautiful in nature that have flaws in them too.

The roses were done in two different sessions, and took about a few hours. If it was up to her, Jahan says she would be "fully tatted up." But because of her busy schedule, she hasn't had time.

Jahan also has two word tattoos on both of her forearms. On her left is "Love all, hate none, trust few," and is a nod to the music industry. "There’s a lot of shady stuff that goes down in the industry and being an artist within it, you really witness that. It’s a really dirty business too and a lot of people don’t realize that until you’re in it. And it’s just a reminder to, no matter how many people can try to f**k you over in certain situations, not to become bitter about music and not to lose sight of the art. My grandfather gives me great advice about how to deal with people in the business as well, so he inspired this phrase [too].

On her right forearm is the phrase, "Life is a dancefloor." Jahan explains, "This was probably my second tattoo I ever got, and this is actually when I first started experiencing the club atmosphere. I wasn’t underage, I think I had just turned 21, and I love that feeling when you’re on the dancefloor and you don’t even have to be drunk or under the influence. You’re sober, and you just completely forget about the world, you forget about your worries. And me personally, I’m the type of person to overthinks things and overanalyzes, and I stress out a lot. It’s kind of that just reminder of, you know, enjoy the beauty in life. And also I love dance music too, so it just shows my love for dance music."

Jahan is already thinking about her next tattoo. She says, "Something I really feel strongly about is, I feel this sense of guilt for neglecting my parents as they’re aging. And I feel like I can’t be there for them just because of our lifestyle. We’re always touring, and I’m really starting to see my parents age, and it makes me so sad. There’s this beautiful image I have in my head of a little girl, it’ll be an abstract girl (it’s not gonna be a creepy illustration of a girl), but it’s a little girl and she’s holding a skull in her hands. It’s really gonna depict this idea [that] as we grow older, don’t forget that your parents are aging. So, as we’re trying to be successful, and as we’re trying to have a successful career, don’t forget your parents are getting sick, I know it’s kind of depressing, but for me, I love my parents so much, and they’re probably like the priority of my life. Hopefully someday I’ll get to the point where I can have a more balanced lifestyle, where it’s not all work and I can visit my parents more and hopefully help them retire early so they’re not working their butts off.I think they deserve [it] now, and they raised three girls, they deserve now to just live a relaxing life."